Overview

Henry James left America in 1875 for the sake of his art and for the rich cultural heritage of Europe. His return in the late summer of 1904, based on both romantic and practical motives, allowed him to revisit the now-transformed cities of his youth as well as to experience for the first time the country's southern states. The American Scene is a major work from James' final, most adventurous creative phase and offers a cultural and social critique of contemporary American society as well as a personal series of 'gathered impressions', a form of indirect yet sometimes intimate autobiography. This new edition includes detailed explanatory notes, a general introduction, a chronology, an itinerary of James' journey, a record of textual variants and rare manuscript material, appendices which include the journal James kept, texts for the two lectures he gave, and two additional essays written on his return to England.

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9781108454933

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Reviews

'… Collister's The American Scene is furnished with abundant resources in terms of its critical apparatus and annotations, far outstripping those included in previous editions of the text. These do rigorous work historicising James' text, linking the incidents of the travelogue to the events of James' own journey, offering insight into the relationship between life and art … Of added interest to [the] scholarly community … will be Collister's collations of variants on the basis of the galley proofs for the chapter on 'New England', held today at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale … Collister's introduction is masterful and authoritative, and very useful is his inclusion of an itinerary of James' American journey, as are his appendices … Collister's The American Scene is an excellent edition, which will hopefully provide the text with a new readership.' Giles Whiteley, Notes and Queries 'The editor, Peter Collister, an expert on the late James, has done a fine job … Collister's The American Scene is furnished with abundant resources in terms of its critical apparatus and annotations, far outstripping those included in previous editions of the text. These do rigorous work historicising James' text, linking the incidents of the travelogue to the events of James' own journey, offering insight into the relationship between life and art … Collister's introduction is masterful and authoritative, and very useful is his inclusion of an itinerary of James' American journey, as are his appendices … [This] is an excellent edition, which will hopefully provide the text with a new readership.' Giles Whiteley, Notes and Queries 'This edition represents a daunting amount of work, and is full of things to be grateful for in coming to terms with this difficult, self-reflexive, controversial book …the core of valuable research here is a serious achievement.' TLS '… this publication abundantly displays the kind of comprehensiveness that we have come to expect from Collister's work.' Michael Anesko, The Henry James Review 'Peter Collister's new edition of The American Scene is an indispensable guide to this experimental narrative.' Sarah B. Daugherty, American Literary Scholarship

Author Information

Peter Collister is the author of the award-winning two volumes of The Complete Writings of Henry James on Art and Drama (Cambridge, 2016). He has also edited James's autobiographical writings in A Small Boy and Others (2011) and 'Notes of a Son and Brother' and 'The Middle Years' (2011) and is the author of Writing the Self: Henry James and America (2007). He has also published numerous essays on English and French writers in British, European and American journals.

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